


Mind Games

by BasicBathsheba



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Intense Eye Contact, M/M, and they were lab partners, oh my god they were lab partners, they're being used as magical lab rats, two boys being dicks together in the name of science, two boys trapped in a room talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-20 23:27:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14271870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BasicBathsheba/pseuds/BasicBathsheba
Summary: Seventh year Watford students are required to take part in the eighth year Psychology of Magick lab studies. Simon loves it. Baz hates it. But when they get paired together for a school project that requires deep, personal conversation, little do they know, there’s more to the project than just getting to know each other.#AND THEY WERE LAB PARTNERS





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This piece is inspired by a bizarre social experiment called The 36 Questions To Fall In love. Find your enemy. Try it out. Report back. https://nyti.ms/2jcuFMd

**BAZ**

This might constitute as torture. At the very least it’s unethical. 

Bunce agrees with me, clearly. I can see her across the room, huffing and groaning. She looks more impatient than Snow. But then again, Snow always seems to actually  _enjoy_  this forced interrogation. 

Just further proof that he’s a moron.

If it weren’t required for seventh years, I’d never come to these lab rat seminars for the Psychology of Magick class. It’s ludicrous, making seventh year students show up once a month to participate in these “experiments” for the eighth year students. They make us suffer through useless activities, and then at the end reveal the true purpose of the experiment, like testing a spell to enhance colours, or studying the effects of confidence spells on middle siblings. It’s inhumane, and often humiliating, and I would happily escalate this up the chain of command and attempt to abolish the entire requirement, if it weren’t for the fact that my mother was the one who implemented it.

I respect her legacy, but not her support of psychology.

The Magickal Psych students are congregated in the corner of the dining hall, organising a thick stack of papers and setting out pens. They’ve provided a paltry selection of refreshments (they always do) and I can already see Snow eyeing the food impatiently. I’m amazed he hasn’t already attacked it.

“Okay, I think we’re just about ready, so please take your seats!” calls a blonde eighth year. I hate him. He has one of those happy round faces and he’s persistently cheerful. (He says hello to me in hallways although we’ve never spoken.) (What kind of person does that?)

“So, before we begin, we’re going to cut some of you. Anyone who is in a relationship, feel free to leave, we won’t need you for today’s experiment,” the eighth year says.

I raise an eyebrow. Sweet merciful Morgana, what kind of idiotic questions are they going to make us answer today?

From beside me, the pixie and her girlfriend leave the room, and several other students begin to file out as the crowd thins.

Usually when they ask control questions like this, I lie to get myself excused. Thus far I’ve pretended to be allergic to cats, lactose intolerant, and colourblind. I consider lying again today — just tell someone I have a girlfriend back in Hampshire — but Dev and Niall would know I’m lying, and somehow creating a fake girlfriend feels far more pathetic than pretending to have a milk sensitivity.

Crowley, this is unbearable.

I hear Bunce let loose a whoop of joy as she grabs her bags and heads to the exit. (I guess she’s still dating the American.) I wait for Snow and Wellbelove to follow her, but neither of them are moving. And neither of them are looking at each other.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

“Alright folks, everyone left, write your name on a piece of paper and drop it in the hat,” calls the cheerful eighth year. (His voice lilts up when he speaks.) (He’s incredibly unpleasant to listen to.) He walks around holding out a literal cone shaped wizard hat, and I have to keep myself from vomiting as I put my name in it. When everyone is done, he goes to the corner, pulls out a wand, mutters some kind of spell over the hat, and returns.

“For today’s experiment, everyone remaining will be paired with a partner. Pull a name, find your partner, and then please pick up a questionnaire packet from the first pile on the left,” he says, walking down the rows.

I hope I get Wellbelove. That would piss Snow off magnificently, and make this day less of an absolute waste. 

She blushes when she pulls her name from the hat, and I raise an eyebrow as she turns around. Did she really — Oh. No. She’s looking at Dev, who is now glowing beside me like he’s just won a lotto. Merlin. Knowing my luck, I’ll probably be paired with Gareth, the belt buckle boy.

Snow is up next, and he shoves his hand into the hat far too violently, stirring around like he’s agonising over the decision, (every decision seems to torture him) and then pulls a name out. 

He looks at it, and the room immediately fills with a sticky haze of smoke and I know whose name is written on it well before he turns around to glare at me. His chin is jutted out and his brow is furrowed, and he’s staring daggers at me like I somehow managed to orchestrate this.

I should have just lied about having a girlfriend.  
  
**SIMON**

I usually love doing these experiments. I get to hang out with Penny for the day and answer random questions and eat food and get class credit for it. I never have to do magic, I never have to take a test. One time I got to just make loads of random lists. It was brilliant.

I don’t think today is going to be brilliant.

What the fuck kind of experiment can only be done on single people? And why did it have to happen this month, of all months? When Greg, the eighth year running the experiment, told the people in relationships to leave, I didn’t know what to do. Agatha said she needed a break, but that usually ends up with us getting back together. We never actually break up, I thought. We just go on pause.

But when Penny got up, Agatha didn’t follow. So I guess Agatha doesn’t consider herself to be in a relationship. So that was a kick in the fucking gut.

And now I’m paired with Baz.

It’s fine, I guess. You win some, you lose some. I just… I really didn’t want to fucking lose today. These things always involve conversations and questions and doing activities together, and Baz is going to make this unbearable.

My magic is leaking a bit and people are coughing, so I try to pull it back in as I storm to the front and grab the questionnaire for today and glance over the first page. 

Is this a fucking joke?

_**Before beginning today’s activity, please fill out this short survey regarding your impressions of your partner for today.** _

**1\. On a scale of 1-5 how would you rate your relationship with your partner, with 1 being stranger and 5 being close friend?**

What number do I put for enemy? I’ll just put 2.

**2\. On a scale of 1-5, how approachable do you find your partner, with 1 being not at all and 5 being extremely?**

That’s definitely a 1.

**3\. On a scale of 1-5, how trustworthy do you find your partner, with 1 being not at all and 5 being extremely?**

Can I put 0? Probably not. I’ll just put 1.

**4\. On a scale of 1-5, how likely would you be to discuss personal matters with your partner, with 1 being not at all, and 5 being highly likely?**

Yeah, that’s definitely a 1.

“What the fuck kind of questions are these?” Baz sneers from beside me. At some point while I was filling out the questionnaire, he came and sat across from me. He’s got his hair down around his face, which annoys me, because he usually pulls it back when he’s studying or taking something seriously. But his hair is just hanging lazily in his pouty-looking eyes right now, showing to all the world just how much he doesn’t care.

Why do people think it’s cool to not care about things?

“What did you put?” I ask. He raises an eyebrow.

“What do you think I put?” he snaps back. His tone is dismissive. “I gave you fives across the board, obviously. Because you’re my best friend and closest confidant.”

I glance at his paper to see if he’s lying, only to see that he hasn’t even written anything on it at all. I growl and finish filling out the first page. It’s full of questions like that —  _how willing would I be to disclose a fear to my partner?_  (Never.)  _How comfortable am I physically touching my partner?_  (Never. Unless I’m hitting him.)  _How likely am I to agree with my partner’s opinions?_

I put a 2 for that one, because I do actually agree with Baz on one thing: what the fuck are these questions?

“Okay you lot!” Greg calls over the crowd. “You should be done with part one by now. I’ll come collect those, and give you your activity for today. The sheets you receive will have a series of questions that you and your partner will each answer.”

I relax a bit. Answering questions isn’t too bad. Baz will probably just be silent. I can get food. We can get through this. I was slightly worried we were going to have to do trust falls or something.

Baz is sitting back in his chair across from me, his arms folded, and he glances down at his watch like he’s bored. When Greg drops another thick packet in front of us, Baz doesn’t even blink at him. Circe, he’s working himself into a full on strop.

“ _Enclosed find 36 questions. Please take turns asking them. Both partners should answer the question before moving on to the next one_ ,” I read aloud. Baz doesn’t even blink at me. He’s picking fluff off his sleeve. 

Fine. If he wants to sit there like a twat, that’s fine. I’m going to try to do the assignment though. 

“Alright, first question,” I growl. “ _Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?_ ” I pause for a moment, then shrug. “Uh, I guess Ronaldo?”

Baz raises an eyebrow. 

“Ronaldo? You could have dinner with anyone. Anyone. And you choose a footballer?”

I shrug again. Why does he have to be a dick about everything? Ronaldo is cool.

“Who would you choose?” I growl.

“No one,” he answers simply. “I dislike dinner company.”

That’s such a fucking Baz answer. 

He grabs the packet from me, flips to the next question, and then a grin stretches across his face. He looks absolutely delighted. Fuck.

“ _Would you like to be famous?_ ” he asks, then laughs. “Tell me Snow, would you like to be famous?”

My mouth opens and closes a few times, my jaw working on an answer while his grey eyes just dance with glee. Why did I have to get paired with him for this? I wish I had been paired with Gareth. At least there doesn’t seem to be magic involved, so I could have just had a nice chat with him without having to see his weird hip gyrations.

“No,” I spit out. “You?” 

Baz just slides the packet back over to me and reclines back in his chair again. 

“I don’t seek fame, I just exist comfortably in it. I’ll be a legend after I kill you,” he says cooly. There’s a glint in his eye right now, a glint that always spells trouble. And usually a broken nose or a fire.

Merlin, this is going to be miserable.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**BAZ**

These questions are absolutely asinine.  _Do we rehearse what we’ll say on the phone?_  (No. I don’t call people, and Snow doesn’t have a phone.)  _What’s a perfect day?_  (He says playing football and eating scones. I say plotting.)  _What are you grateful for?_  (I say my effortless beauty. He says Penny.) (That’s actually almost touching.)

Not to mention there are so many of them.

“ _When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?_ ” I ask. I pause. When was the last time I sang to myself? I have no idea. Why does this matter? Bullshit like this is why I hate psychology.

“I sang this morning,” Snow says, even though it’s my turn to answer. I just stare at him.

“What did you sing?” He shrugs. He doesn’t look embarrassed by this admission in the least.

“Queen.”

“Why?”

He shrugs again. 

“I was in the shower and I knew you were at practice.”

Does Snow sing in our shower while I’m not around? I get a sudden image of Snow, covered in suds, belting out an off-key tune. Fuck, it makes me want to smile. This sudden, unexpected, horrifyingly adorable mental image is what causes me to tell him the truth, I think.

“I don’t sing to myself. But I sang my little brother to sleep over the holiday,” I say. Snow flashes me a cheeky grin. 

“What did you sing him?”

I should lie and say something dismissive like  _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star_ , but instead I tell the truth. 

“Radiohead,” I say as I shove the packet back at him. He smiles at me again. 

This entire situation is a nightmare.

“ _If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?_ ” Snow reads. 

“Pass.” I’m not digging into childhood trauma and loneliness for a school requirement. 

“You can’t pass,” he sputters. “You have to answer the question.”

“I would have preferred more opportunities to eat chocolate cake for breakfast,” I say.

Snow just stares at me, his mouth hanging open. (He looks exceptionally indignant when he does that.)

“Seriously? If I could change something, I’d have my parents be around. Wouldn’t you do that? Wouldn’t you have rather grown up with your mum?”

I can feel myself tense, and my fingers wrap more tightly around my pen. Of course I would prefer my mother to be alive. If she were alive, I wouldn’t be the way I am. If she were alive, the Mage wouldn’t be in charge. Snow wouldn’t be his heir. Snow wouldn’t be my enemy.

In this hypothetical world, Snow’s parents would be alive too. Maybe they would be mages, and he would have gained entry to Watford like any other normal student, and when the Crucible bound us together in the first year, we would have met as friends.

So, no. I don’t want to ponder how my childhood could have been different.

“I’m confident with my chocolate cake answer,” I say. Snow rolls his eyes and puts his arms up on the table and leans in. He’s giving me a suspicious look, the kind that’s usually followed by questions like “where are you going?” or “what are you planning?” or “are you a vampire?”

“I don’t believe that. I know you’d bring your mum back. Why are you lying?” he demands.

“That’s not one of the questions,” I sneer. But Snow is staring at me, his eyes so focused on my face that it’s difficult to look away. 

“There’s nothing weak about wanting your mum to have not died,” he says quietly. Of course there isn’t. I don’t think that missing her makes me weak. I’m just not willing to talk about it. Silence isn’t weak. (I am weak. But not because of this.) (Because of him.)

“Of course I want her to have not died,” I hiss back. I look away from his face; it’s too open. “But she did, and this game won’t change that, so I’d rather not dwell on fanciful hypotheticals.”

This appears to satisfy him, because he slides the packet back over to me. I glance at it briefly before sighing dramatically.

“ _Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common_ ,” I say in a bored, monotonous voice. I’m trying to think of the most bland, generic things we have in common. All I can come up with is our gender. I can’t possibly imagine what in the world Snow and I would have in common. 

Snow has propped his head in his hand though, and is chewing on his lip. Merlin, he’s actually taking this seriously.

I love it when you can see him thinking. Sometimes it looks like his brain might overheat. Considering how erratic his magic is, I’m not positive it won’t happen someday. I hope I get to see it.

“Well,” he starts slowly. “I guess we’re both pretty stubborn. And we’ve both lost a parent in some way,” he says. My stomach constricts. “And I suppose we both have a lot of expectations put on us. So I’d guess we’re probably both dealing with that same kind of stress.”

I don’t know what to say. Simon has never been this insightful in his life. He’s clearly put some kind of thought into my feelings and experiences, and I’ve never afforded him that same level of reflection. I know there are expectations on him — but I’ve never stopped to wonder if he wanted them. I’ve always assumed he would just go off and do whatever he was told. And he lives for fights. So I figured he welcomed his role as the Mage’s personal nuclear weapon.

This is extremely uncomfortable. He’s looking at me so openly, unguardedly, sharing bits of himself. I have no idea how to react. I’ve never prepared for this scenario.

“You didn’t lose a parent, they gave you up. It’s not the same,” I snap instead. I can immediately taste the sticky smoke that comes rolling off of him.  
  
 **SIMON**

These questions are getting kind of heavy. And I’m starting to not want to answer them. 

Baz is still holding up his bored facade, but he’s twitching as they get more and more personal, and it becomes difficult for him to continue dismissing them with shitty comments.

“ _How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?_ ” he reads. He stares at the page for a moment, then his eyes flick up to me. “Let’s skip this one, shall we?” 

I nod. Yeah. That’s probably for the best.

“ _What is your most terrible memory?_ ” I ask next, and there’s a heavy fucking silence. Baz looks away. “You, er…” I mumble. “You don’t have to answer this.” There’s no point, anyway. We both know what the answer will be. There can’t be any memory worse than watching your mother die. Also, this quiz seems to be full of mommy issue questions. What’s with that?

“Thank you,” he says sharply, and I almost flinch when he says it because it is absolutely the first time Baz has ever thanked me.

“My worst memory was probably the day I did magic for the first time,” I say quickly, trying to fill the silence that followed his unnatural thank you. Baz tilts his head. 

“Really? Why? Coming into my magic was one of the best days of my life. I grew a rosebush,” Baz says. His voice sounds softer and the corner of his mouth lilts up a bit. 

“I wish I’d grown flowers. I just set a boy’s home on fire,” I mutter. I hate thinking about the day I went off. I know almost every adult I meet remembers it, and it seems kind of weird, to have this really personal thing be such a public experience. But then again, I guess that’s kind of my life, isn’t it?

I cross my arms on the table and lean my chin on top of them and sigh. 

“I remember it, you know,” Baz says suddenly. I glance up. His eyes are hooded, and he looks lost in thought.

“Really? Penny doesn’t.”

“It happened the same day I came into my magic,” he says softly, almost so quietly that I don’t hear it. “I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was me. I thought I had done it, and I thought that was what magic was always going to feel like.”

“So I guess that was the first time I ruined your day. Glad I got that precedent started early,” I say with a half smile. I’m trying to lighten the mood, because I don’t know what else to say to Baz. Also, it’s kind of weird that we came into our magic at the same time, and I don’t like the uncomfortable pricking feeling that this information is giving me.

Baz doesn’t answer, just reaches out for the packet with his long fingers and spins it around. 

“ _If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?_ ”

His eyes flick up to meet mine, and we’re silent for a long moment before we both let out a sharp, awkward laugh. It’s weird how much more human he looks when he laughs.

“Did they design these ridiculous questions just for us?” he snaps, and I shrug.

“I don’t know, but I think we’re probably the wrong people for this experiment. Pass?” He nods. 

“Yes, lets.”


	3. Chapter 3

**BAZ**

I bet Greg wrote these questions. (Apparently that’s the eighth year sadist’s name.) (According to Snow, at least.) I make a mental note to tear Greg’s throat out and feed it to the merwolves. 

We’re both done with this. For once in our lives, we agree on something. We speed through the next few questions as best as we can, attempting to not get bogged down in the increasingly personal and probing nature of the prompts.  _What roles do love and affection play in your life?_  (“Penny sometimes plays with my hair?” he says, blushing. “I’m allergic to affection,” I answer, bristling.) I breeze past a question about our greatest fear (“Being forced to do this again,” I answer, then grab the packet from Snow and ask the next prompt before he has to answer.) (I assume his greatest fear is the Humdrum, but I honestly don’t want to make him have to answer it.)

“ _Make three true ‘we’ statements each. For instance, ‘We are both in this room feeling…’_ ” I read, then roll my eyes. 

“We are both in this room feeling like this is the most idiotic exercise we’ve ever done,” I snarl, and he exhales a puff of air from his cheeks that makes a small laughing noise. It’s unbearably cute.

“We are probably never going to finish this,” he answers back. His chin is still resting on his arms, his curls flopped into his eyes, and he looks sleepy.

“We are going to die in a dark magic ceremony held by Greg that requires him to slowly and systematically drive a room of seventh years insane,” I respond.

“We are going to starve to death before I get a chance to eat the free food,” he says sadly, and I can’t help it, I fucking laugh. 

“We are the only people who don’t look depressed,” I say, glancing around the room. No one else has laughed in what feels like an hour, and at several tables, people are crying. Niall is holding a redheaded girl’s hand and making sushing noises. Wellbelove and Dev look extremely uncomfortable, and are not looking at each other.

“We are probably the only people not taking this seriously,” he growls back, and I lift an eyebrow.

“I’ve been taking this seriously,” I say. Snow sits up and tilts his head to the side, and he looks like a dog.

“Your hair is down though,” he says stupidly. I don’t respond, just raise my eyebrow further, and I can see him start to sputter. “I just meant, when you’re taking something seriously, you pull your hair back.” He looks down at the table as he says this, and I watch his Adam’s Apple bob ridiculously as he swallows.

Do I? I don’t think I’ve ever noticed.

Simon has, though.

I detest myself for the lightness that starting to seep through me.

“If I wasn’t taking this seriously, I would have just left,” I snap. Snow stares at me, then shrugs and reaches across the table for the packet. Our fingers brush lightly as he takes it, and I pull my arm back quickly and cross them over my chest as I recline back in the chair. 

I fix my face back into a sullen expression. 

“ _If you were to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know_ ,” Snow reads. He glances back up at me, then down at the paper. “Well, if we were to be friends, I think you should tell me you’re a vampire.”

“Then I think you should tell me that you’re half numpty.”

“You should also tell me what you’re plotting,” he responds. He looks a bit hurt by the numpty comment. (I don’t regret it.) (It’s true.)

“You should tell me why our fucking window is always open in the middle of January,” I snap back. I reach for the packet again. I’m done with this exercise. It’s been fun, in a horrifying way, but I’m ready to leave now. We’ve been here for at least and hour, and I feel emotionally drained.

And besides, Snow and I have crested the wave, and we’re about to be back to biting each other’s heads off.

“ _Complete this sentence. ‘I wish I had someone with whom I could share…’_ ” I read, then close my eyes. Crowley, these are probing. With a heavy sigh, I open my eyes again. “I wish I had someone with whom I could share the intense homicidal urges I’m having right now.”

Snow smiles a bit at that, and resumes his stretched out position on the table. He looks about as strung out as I feel. He’s so close, I could just reach out and touch his curls.

“I wish I had someone who could share the whole Humdrum job. Somebody to help,” he says quietly, with a sad little sigh.

I wasn’t expecting that.

“You have Bunce,” I say, and he nods.

“Yeah, but it’s not like, her job. She’ll help. But when it gets down to it, I’ll be the one fighting, you know?” he looks up to meet my eyes, then looks away. “It would be nice to be able to tag team it, to know I’m not going to have to do it all my own.”

“Isn’t that what the Mage is for? You two riding into battle together like Robin Hood and his Merry Man?”

Snow sits up, his eyes wide.

“I don’t know,” he whispers. “I guess he’d be there. Yeah. That would… yeah that would make sense. I guess I’ve always thought of it as like…I don’t know. Going in alone.”

He doesn’t have to be alone.

But I don’t say that.

**SIMON**

“Last question! Oh fuck yes, it looks like it’s a list,” I say as I pull the packet back from Baz. 

“Why are you excited by a list?”

I shrug. 

“I like lists. I make them in my head all the time. To get organised. Don’t you?”

“Lists like what?” Baz asks. One strand of hair has fallen in his eyes, and he’s staring at me sulkily from under it. With every minute that passes, I can tell he doesn’t want to be here. Honestly, I’m starting to kind of not want to be here. Baz and I keep alternating between fighting and sharing personal comments, and it’s weirding me out.

We’ve also joked a few times, which is even weirder.

“I dunno. I make lists about my favourite things at Watford. Or lists of things I like. Or things I hate. Or lists of things to not think about.”

“You make a list of things not to think about? How can you make yourself not think about things?”

“Don’t you?” I ask. I don’t think I’m the only one who decides to just not think. I hope I’m not. I don’t want to think about that.

But Baz has furrowed his brows, and he looks like he’s thinking before he softly says “Yes, I suppose I do.”

“Anyway, final question,” I say, turning back to the packet. “ _Tell your partner three things you like about them. Be very detailed and honest._ ”

“Pass,” Baz says.

“You can’t fucking pass on the final question,” I growl. “You can pass on heavy shit or dumb shit, but you can’t pass just because you don’t want to compliment me.”

“Fine. You go first.”

I pause.

I don’t actually know what to compliment about Baz. 

There’s obvious things things I could say. Like, he dresses well. He’s actually pretty fit. And he’s brilliant at football. But those are just compliments. Those aren’t things I necessarily like about him. Those are just objective fact. 

What do I like about Baz?

I like his eyes.

No, that’s weird. I can’t say that. Also, what?

“Uh,” I say, because I have to say something. “I suppose I like that you’re smart. It’s impressive. Though a bit fucking infuriating.” Baz shifts a little and I see a smirk forming. He’s going to enjoy this too much. Crowley, what the fuck else is there to say? “You go, I’m still thinking.”

The smirk drops. He looks away and sighs. 

“You’re brave,” he says, not looking at me. “Don’t get me wrong, you’re a fucking idiot. But you’re brave, and you watch out for others, even at the expense of yourself.” 

He looks like the words have physically pained him, but I kind of appreciate it. It makes it easier for me to speak again.

“You’re cool in a fight. Like with the chimera, you knew what to do.” I pause, and I can feel my hackles rise. “Even if you did try to summon it to eat me. Fuck you, by the way.”

Baz just shrugs. He’s not even bothered by the memory of trying to kill me. Twat.

“You’re loyal. Like a congenitally stupid dog. As a Pitch, I respect loyalty,” he says finally.

“What does congenitally mean?”

“It means you were born that way.”

“Oh, so you’re congenitally a shithead?”

“You have to compliment me again. It’s your turn,” he snaps. I bite my lip. I don’t know what to say. 

“I can’t think of anything,” I say, shrugging. Baz looks pissed off. 

“How flattering.”

“You could go again, round it off. Maybe I’ll think of something,” I tell him. I don’t know why I feel bad about not knowing what to say for my third thing. He’s my enemy. I don’t like anything about him, and he doesn’t like anything about me. It’s not like his feelings will be hurt if I can’t find any redeeming qualities.

But somehow, from the look he’s giving me, I think they actually might be.

“You will be expectionally difficult to kill,” he snarls at me, and I flush a bit. We’ve been sniping at each other since this started, but somehow his shitty comment about killing me feels like he’s crossed a line. 

“Yeah, well you’ll be easy. Just set you on fire and you’ll go up like a piece of paper,” I growl back. “That’s my favourite thing about you.”

Baz just stares at me for a moment, then turns around in his seat. 

“Greg,” he shouts through the hall. People around us start are staring. “We’re done. Can we leave?”

Greg jogs over quickly, coughing a bit. I think I’m smoking slightly. I should dial this back, I know it, but Baz is being such a prick.

“Hey guys! So, great job on finishing that so fast,” he says. Greg always sounds so cheerful. He’s nice, but sometimes he’s too happy. How can someone be so happy all the time? “So, let’s get you started on the next part.”

“Next part?” Baz drawls. He looks truly incredulous. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“Nope!” Greg says, then pulls out his wand and casts  ** _final countdown_** _ **!**_  A stop clock appears in the air counting four minutes. 

“So, what you’re going to do, is you’re going to sit here for four minutes. You can be silent, or you can talk, doesn’t matter. The only thing you have to do is just make eye contact the full time. Got it?”

“What?” Baz and I shout at the same time. 

Eye contact? With Baz? For four minutes? What if he puts me under some kind of vampire thrall? What if he — I don’t know. I don’t know what might happen but absolutely fucking nothing about it will be good. It’s fine though. I’ll just cheat. Baz won’t want to do it either.

 ** _Eyes to the front!_**  Greg casts, and I feel my head jerk forward, against my will, and my eyes lock on to Baz’s. I can’t look away.

Merlin and Morgana I can’t look away.

**BAZ**

I can’t look away.

Fuck a nine toed troll.


	4. Chapter 4

**BAZ  
**

If someone asked me what my worst nightmare was, it would be being forced to stare into Simon fucking Snow’s eyes for four minutes.

What the fuck kind of experiment is this? This is inhumane. His blue eyes are boring into mine, and he looks as angry and trapped as I feel, and I cannot fucking believe that Greg used a spell like that to force us here. This has to go against magickal ethics. 

Across from me, Snow scrunches his eyes shut. Aleister fucking Crowley, is this his plan? To just shut his eyes for four minutes like a toddler so that we don’t have to do this? It’s actually not a bad idea. And with his eyes shut, I can look at him more openly, the way I only dare to when he’s asleep. 

He’s got these bright blue veins that crisscross the outside of his eyelids, and his lashes are surprisingly long. His cheeks are pulled up from the effort of keeping his eyes shut tight, and he looks as intent as he does when he’s sleeping.

But then his eyes fly open, and he’s back. I try to look away, because my gut instinct is to turn away when I’m caught staring, but then I remember that I  _can’t_. 

Fuck all of this.

I’ve wanted to stare into Simon Snow’s eyes for three years. So sure, I’m going to fucking do it.

I relax my posture — I’ve been sitting as rigid and tense as possible — and I collapse back in my chair, cross my arms, and allow myself, for once, to bask in the blinding light of Simon Snow’s unexceptional eyes.

The only problem is that this is fucking terrifying, and I can’t breathe properly.

**SIMON**

He’s going to kill me. He’s going to absolutely kill me.

Sometimes I think he can do nonverbal spells, and even though Penny insists I’m wrong and that those aren’t possible, I still can’t shake this hunch. So, like, this would be a pretty good scenario for him to unleash one of those spells on me and turn me into a slug or slit my throat or put me under a thrall or something.

He looks absolutely fucking murderous.

I close my eyes. He can’t kill me if my eyes are closed, right?

Well. Apparently the spell won’t let me keep them closed for long. Shit.

He doesn’t look as angry now, though. He just looks serious. His eyebrows are pulled together like he’s thinking, but then I guess he decides something, and he sits back in his chair and crosses his arms. 

So…I guess we’re doing this.

I prop my head on my hands — because sitting here upright is getting kind of uncomfortable — and just give in to the spell. 

Eyes are weird. And also, this is weird. My pulse is weirdly fast. This feels….explicit. Wrong. Like we’re doing something way too private and were caught.

My pulse needs to slow the fuck down. I feel like we’ve been sitting here for a century. We’ve been here so long that I feel a bit drunk and unmoored. 

He looks weirdly open, more than he usually does. Almost…vulnerable. Usually he’s hiding behind a sneer or a shitty comment, but there’s nothing. He’s just…here.

His eyes are this colour I can’t describe, like a mix of green and blue and grey like dark water. Sometimes when he’s angry they look like clouds before a thunderstorm. When he’s tired they shift into this slate grey, like the colour of pavement wet from rain. 

I’ve never seen someone with eyes like this, that shift so much. I thought it had to be a vampire thing for the longest time, but I don’t think it is. I think it’s just him. 

I wonder what colour they were when he sang to his brother. I didn’t even know he had a brother, but now all I can think of a frustrated Baz singing Radiohead to a screaming kid. I bet his voice is low and pleasant. That doesn’t exactly mesh with the constant image I have in my head of him as a blood sucking vampire.

My chest feels tight and awkward and like I can’t get a breath in properly. Fuck all of this.

Wait, what is he doing? All of a sudden he’s leaning forward — what is he doing? He’s getting closer, he’s leaning over the table, still making eye contact with me, his hands are coming up, what the fuck is he doing and —

Oh. He’s pulled his hair up and out of his face.

He can probably hear how fucking fast my heart is beating.

I feel lightheaded, and I have no fucking idea what’s happening.

**BAZ**

His eyes have never been anything splendid. They’re just blue. Just plain blue, the same colour as a thousand other men who have blue eyes. And yet, I love them.

They don’t look like eyes anymore though. They’ve warped into a mass of muscle and tissue and I don’t even know what I’m looking at anymore because I think I’ve ceased having the ability to tell what an eye looks like. Are eyes real? What even are they? Crowley, eye is a weird word.

There’s no way we haven’t hit four minutes yet.

I just keep thinking of what he answered to the question “ _What is too serious to be joked about?_ ” He said his magic. (I said my mother.) The one thing that I routinely give him hell about is the thing he’s apparently most sensitive about. Not his missing parents, not his awful football skills. The thing that makes him special, the thing that sets him apart. The thing he’s most embarrassed by.

Sometimes I can really be a piece of shit.

He’s got his head propped in his hand and tilted to the side as he looks at me. He gave in about the same time I did, and settled in for this ride. 

What a fucking ride.

I feel like my skin is on fire. Every nerve ending is twitching and sparking and I feel like I did the day Simon and I grew into our magic. Like I’m touching a live wire.

Simon looks drunk.

His eyes are hooded and look unfocused, and his jaw has gone a bit slack.

“Your eyes are really unique,” he says quietly, suddenly. I don’t think he meant to say it, because his eyes have gone wide and a flush starts up his cheek.

I feel like I’ve been struck by lightning.

“Yours aren’t,” I respond quietly, because I don’t know what else to say.

“Thanks,” he snaps, but I don’t think he’s actually offended. I think he’s just embarrassed.

“I just meant, they’re blue,” I say, and all of a sudden I feel as incapable of speech as him. I see him raise his eyebrows and I bluster to explain myself. I don’t know why. “They’re just…the only thing about you that’s not exceptional,” I whisper. Exceptional? What the fuck? 

As soon as this is over I’m going to burn myself alive.

His eyes are boring into me and this nervous pricking sensation is becoming too much. I feel like I’m heating from the inside out and I’m being burnt out of my body, every nerve and tissue and atom of my existence being cleansed by fire and replaced by  _him_ —

“ ** _As you were!_** ” says a voice beside us, and I feel the compulsion to stare at Snow leave me. The clock hanging in the air reads 00:00. There’s no way that was four minutes. That had to have been four hours.

I have to look anywhere but Snow. 

Around us, various partners are still staring at each other, while others have finished the activity and are sitting, chatty awkwardly. Everyone here looks either awkward, depressed, or embarrassingly happy. 

I don’t know what Snow and I look like.

After a few moments, Dev and Wellbelove are the only couple still staring each other down, and it doesn’t look pleasant. Dev looks like he wants to jump off a building, and Wellbelove looks ready for battle. Finally their clock runs down, and the whole room cheers as they break eye contact. 

Finally.

**SIMON**

Greg comes around and collects the packets and gives us  _another_  one. How fucking long is this experiment?

It’s full of the same questions as before, asking us to rate things about our partner on a scale of 1-5. I give Baz the same scores as last time, though a few of them give me pause. I guess he’s actually way more approachable than I thought. If he’s not in a position to kill me, I guess he’s not actually that scary. And talking about personal things with him isn’t as bad as I thought, even if he is likely to tell his crazy aunt everything I said. But go ahead. I doubt the Old Families are going to bring down the Mage with the knowledge that I sing Queen and like when people play with my hair.

And also, I think he just called me exceptional. So. 

I glance at Baz’s paper, but he slams his hand down on top of it when he catches me.

“No cheating, Snow,” he snaps. But there’s a ghost of a smile.

There’s a fucking smile, I’m certain.

Greg comes back around to collect the papers and tries to give me a high five, but I’m not paying attention because I’m looking at Baz’s mouth so instead I accidentally hit his arm. All of this is weird and I feel like I just came out of a haze, but at least we’re  _done_. This is the part where they explain what the experiment was about, let us loose on the food, and set us free.

I’m going to go take my scones outside and take a nap, I think.

“Alright, now that everyone has finished,” Greg says, taking his spot back at the front of the room. “As you know, there are no spells that can create love. Actual love, not just, you know, lust. So, today’s experiment was an attempt to see if we could, using modern psychology and magic, create love.”

Love?

“After you all put your names in the hat, we cast  _ **Love is blind!**_  and then had you pick a name out of the hat,” Greg says, smiling cheerily, like he’s not saying the most horrifying thing I’ve ever heard. “Taking into account personality, chemistry, and sexual preference, the spell then paired you all with the partner you were most likely to have the strongest romantic connection with. You answered the 36 questions in order to reach a sped up, enhanced level of intimacy with your partner.”

Sexual preference? Love? Intimacy?

I can’t look at Baz. I can’t look at Baz.

What the fuck. Why didn’t it pair me with Agatha?

Sexual preference?

I glance to the side, to see if I can see what other people are feeling. Everyone looks as stiff and freaked out as I do. Agatha isn’t looking at me, but she looks ready to kill someone.

Love? Sexual preference?

There’s one pair of girls in the back, but otherwise Baz and I are the only same sex couple. I mean partners. I mean group. 

“Now, we’re going to do one-on-one interviews to see how you feel about your partners and the—”

A loud scraping sound cuts Greg off mid sentence, and I look over just in time to see Baz push himself back from the table, pull his hair down, and storm from the room.

He doesn’t even look back at me once.

_Love?_


	5. Chapter 5

**SIMON** **  
**

I have no idea what’s just happened. 

I’m trying to do the exit interview with Greg, but I don’t know what to say or what to think.

“How did you feel about your partner before the experiment?” he asks, and I say, “We were enemies and probably going to kill each other.” And then he asks “how do you feel about your partner after the experiment?” and I say “We’re enemies and he’s probably going to kill me.” 

I don’t give a shit about a grade or doing this properly, and I just want to  _leave_ because there’s a lot of shit to think over right now. And also, fuck Greg. What the fuck kind of shitty fucking thing is it to spring something like this on a roomful of fucking kids when everyone else can fucking see and then act like its no fucking big deal, and Baz looked so fucking angry and—

Sexual preference? Love? Romantic connection?  _Baz?_

Like he needed yet another reason to hate me.

**BAZ**

It’s humiliating to be outed in front of the entire seventh year Magickal Psychology lab. 

But it’s fucking horrifying to have your pathetic crush on Simon fucking Snow outed in front of the entire seventh year Magickal Psychology lab, which includes Simon fucking Snow.

Tonight when Watford is asleep I’m going to find Greg the eighth year and throw him to the merwolves. Then I’m going to dive in. 

Creating love? Who the fuck does he think he is?

Psychology is bullshit.

**SIMON**

I’m on my way out of the hall — Crowley, everyone is staring at me — when I see the two girls who had been partnered together standing by the door. I make a beeline for them. I only know one of them, a girl named Jen, but I’ve seen the two of them together a lot.

“I’m so sorry,” Jen is whispering, but her friend is shaking her head and muttering, “no, no, really, I don’t mind.” They look up when they see me standing there, and I realise I hadn’t thought through what I was going to say, so I just shove my hands in my pockets and stare awkwardly.

“So, uh, er,” I start, and Jen waits patiently. Her friend looks ready to stab me. “Are you two, er—”

“I am,” Jen says quietly, looking around. “She’s not.” Her friend looks more terrifying than Baz right now. Jen looks close to tears. “I’m the one that pulled the name, so I think, for lack of any other lesbians, it just paired me with Mary because we’re best friends.” Jen takes a deep breath. “But now people are going to gossip and think that Mary is—”

“Jen, I don’t care,” Mary snaps. “Fuck them. Sure, I’m straight, but do you think I care what people think? It’s a stupid experiment, and I’m not going to let a badly done spell get to me.”

They both turn to me, like I’m going to have something to add to this, but I feel like I’m about to explode. 

“I have to go,” I mutter, and then I get the hell out of there.

**BAZ**

_Of course_ the fucking spell paired us together. My humiliating infatuation with him is strong enough to override any pining he might have for Wellbelove. 

I’m not even that upset about being outed as queer. Whatever. I am, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And anyway, if I spin it right, I could probably find a way to make it look like I planned this to piss of Snow. It’s just that for a minute I thought…No.

I doesn’t matter what I thought, or what I felt. It doesn’t matter if Snow opened up to me, or told me he liked my eyes, or said any of the things he said. It doesn’t matter that I spent four fucking minutes peering into his soul. The first thing he did was turn around to stare at her. And now he knows. He knows, and he wishes he had been paired with her.

We’re not friends.

We hate each other, and that’s fine. But if he hates me for this — a thing I can’t control, a thing I didn’t choose, a thing I have no shame about — I don’t think I can handle that. I can love him, even though I have to kill him. But I’m not sure if I could love him after that.

**SIMON**

“So, what’s the issue? That Baz is gay? Who cares?” Penny looks ready to strangle me. She’s been listening to me pace and stutter and mumble for about thirty minutes now, and any patience she had disappeared after the first five minutes.

“Penny, don’t you get it?” I say, pulling on my hair. “I’m not freaking because  _Baz_ is gay.  _I’m_  the one who pulled his name. The spell worked on  _me_.”

“Oh,” Penny says. Then she stops. “So, you think  _you’re_  gay?”

“I don’t know!” I shout. “I know I like girls. I know I liked Agatha — I like Agatha. But I won’t lie, when Greg said sexual preference and then I started thinking about it, and I guess, there just are… things, and, so, yeah, I don’t know.”

“You do know you can like both, right?” she says, like this is the most obvious thing in the entire world. 

It’s not.

“Both?” I echo. She nods and lays back down on Baz’s bed. (I’m pretty sure he’s never going to come back to the room.) (I’m pretty sure he’s going to avoid me forever.) (Or at least until he’s worked out a plan to kill me.) (But it’s him, and he’s brilliant, so that won’t take long.) “But like…how do I know?”

“Well, I think the spell was a pretty good indicator. And I feel like if you’re asking whether you’re gay, you probably are,” she answers. She sounds bored, like this isn’t the most terrifying thing to happen to me this year year.

Actually, it might not be. The worsegers were pretty terrifying. This is weird, sure, but…the more I think about it, this might not be in the top 5 weirdest things to happen to me.

“Who do you think of when you wank?” she asks casually.

“ _What?_ ” I screech. I’m going red, and I can’t shake my head fast enough. “No. No, I’m not — no. We’re not talking about this.”

“Crowley, I don’t want to  _know_ ,” she snaps. “I just thought it might help you.”

“I’ve got to go,” I say, standing up. “I have to find Baz.”

Penny’s eyebrow lifts, and she sighs. 

“Baz Baz Baz. You really are a broken record sometimes, Si.”

**BAZ**

I don’t usually do schoolwork outside, because the sun stings a bit, but I refuse to go back to my room, and the idea of sitting in the library and watching as news of my infatuation with Snow spreads around school sounds too awful to contemplate. I could go to the catacombs, but I hate going in there while it’s light out, and also something about fleeing to the crypts feels too dramatic even for me.

I refuse to become a caricature of a pining gay vampire. 

So I’m camped under a tree at the edge of the grounds, shifting every so often to keep the sun out of my face, attempting to focus on schoolwork when all I can think of are Simon Snow’s eyes and the sound of his sleepy laugh and the way my stomach tugged uncomfortably when he smiled at me. I really am pathetic.

I smell him before I see him. The magic precedes him, rolling up the hill like some kind of anxious fog, and the wind spreads it out. He’s far more bearable when he’s outside; when he gets going in the classroom, he makes it hard to breathe.

He’s standing next to me and the smell of smoke is almost unbearable but I don’t look up when I snap, “What do you want, Snow?”

“Can I sit down?’ he asks. He looks nervous as a worseger.

“No,” I say as throws himself to the ground in a heap of limbs.

“Look, I wanted to talk to you—” he starts, but I just shake my head and turn the page of my book. 

“I think we’ve spoken enough for the next few weeks, don’t you?”

“Baz, listen, I—”

“I’ve been listening to you all day,” I snap.

“For fuck’s sake, just, shut up!” he shouts. He growls and tugs at his hair and then falls back on his elbows. How fucking dare he recline here like some Greek god, huffing and sputtering and trying to find his words.

“You should know…” he says, then stops. “The thing, with the hat and the spell. Look, I’m sorry. I have no fucking idea how that happened, but it’s my fault. And I know people are going to be dicks about it. And I know you already hate me so what’s one more thing, but I just… I don’t know, do with this what you will. So…yeah.”

“What are you going on about?” I say, narrowing my eyes as I finally look directly at him. We’re on the precipice here, but he’s speaking Simon, and I can’t translate.

“The spell?” he says, like I’m the slow one. “I pulled the name. I don’t know why it pulled you — maybe because you hate me? And that’s a strong emotion? — but it’s my fault you got paired with…you know, a bloke.”

There’s no fucking way.

“Why do you think it’s your fault?” I ask.

“Because I’m… you know.”

“You’re gay?”

“No!” he shouts, then pauses. 

Is the universe queerbaiting me? 

He’s working himself up into a full bluster here, Crowley. “I just…I’m not strictly straight. It did the same thing with the girls in the back. One was a lesbian, and it paired her with her straight friend. I think it just did the same for us.”

Oh.  _Oh_. Oh this sweet, stupid boy.

“Why do you think it was you, then? Are you sure you’re…” Oh, Merlin, just say it, “queer?”

I expect him to flinch, but he doesn’t, he just bites his lip and looks like he’s seriously studying the question. 

“Yeah, I think so. I mean, it would explain the hat. And Penny just told me apparently you can, you know, like girls and blokes at the same time, so, you know, that makes sense. So I’m thinking, yeah.” He looks away for a moment and sighs heavily. “I’m sorry, Baz. This has got to be humiliating for you, and even worse because it’s me, and everyone’s going to find out. I’m really sorry.”

I can’t stop the cold laugh that escapes me. I spent a year agonising over my sexuality and he thinks he’s riddled it out in 30 minutes because a hat told him so? Has he always been this fucking gullible?

(Considering how easily I’ve lured him into dangerous situations by pretending to leave notes from Wellbelove, I guess the answer is: yes.)

“Snow, it wasn’t you,” I say, because I cannot handle the idea of Simon going through life thinking he’s bisexual because psychology tricked him into it. 

“What?” he asks, and I sigh, because he’s thick, and he’s impossible, and he’s beautiful, and I’m going to tell him my secret.

“It wasn’t you that caused us to be partnered. It was me. I’m gay.”

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**BAZ**

In the fourth year I had this recurring dream — or fantasy, more accurately — that Simon and I would find some common ground to unite us, and we’d become friends. Allies. We’d work together for some greater goal and through that process we would, inevitably, become best friends. By the fifth year, I imagined we’d fall in love. By sixth year, I dreamt that we would tolerate each other.

I never thought my sixth year fantasy would come true. 

I always assumed that the common cause would be fighting the Humdrum, or saving Watford, or solving a mystery. I never thought the thing that would bring us together would be being gay. 

Or rather, “not straight,” as he repeatedly insists. Apparently thirty minutes of reflection is enough to make Simon realise he likes men, but not enough to make him comfortable with a queer label. I will never understand him. 

But, despite telling him I’m gay, he’s still sticking by his theory that the hat’s selection was based entirely on sexual preference, and not because I’d jump him in a heartbeat.

“We can just say it was me that caused us to get paired,” he said on the way back to the room. “I don’t know if your family knows or if you want them to know, or if they’d be disappointed or something shitty.”

“They would have to acknowledge it in order to be disappointed,” I answered, but I didn’t argue with his offer. If he wants to be the openly bisexual Chosen One, I’m sure as shit not going to stop him. 

“Sorry your family is weird about…you know,” he said when I got out of the shower the next morning. I stared. Apparently we were still discussing this. 

“Is the Mage going to be bothered?” I asked him instead of answering. He paused in the middle of picking out a shirt. (He has four identical shirts. Why does he do this every day?)

“Why the fuck would the Mage care who I like?” he asked, surprised. I shrug (I’ve picked it up from him.) (I hate it.) (But it’s a gesture that says so much, while saying nothing.)

I didn’t have an answer.

Apparently Watford isn’t as fascinated by Simon’s sexuality as I am, because there wasn’t really any backlash. No one cared. No one said anything. And so I assumed it had blown over. This unfortunate occurrence had passed, we had both survived, and things could go back to the way they were. 

Except they didn’t. 

“How long have you known?” he asked as we walked down to breakfast one morning. 

“Longer than you,” I responded. 

“Right but like, how long?” he pushed as he got in line behind me for coffee. 

“I’m going to rip your tongue out,” I responded.

I keep waiting for him to figure out I’m in love with him. I had thought this would become blindingly clear: the hat put us together, he knows I like men, and I called him fucking exceptional. I practically put a sign on my forehead screaming “I’m in love with Simon Snow, set me on fire and laugh” and yet  _somehow_  he’s completely missed it, and is still trying to take responsibility for it.

I don’t understand the mental leaps he had to do to convince himself that somehow my intense hatred for him fucked up the spell. But then again, I don’t understand anything about the way Simon thinks.

He’s so stupid, and yet, I love him.

**SIMON**

“Have you ever fancied anyone?” I ask Baz. I’m lying on my bed with my feet up on the wall, trying to study, but I can’t. It’s warm out, and we’ve got the window open, and it’s an afternoon that should not be spent trying to teach myself Greek. Honestly, if I don’t have it by now, I’m never going to.

“We’re not talking about this,” Baz snaps back from the other side of the room. He was working, but I saw him give up a few minutes ago, and he’s just been staring out the window ever since.

“So that’s a yes,” I say, throwing my book to the floor. “And considering how prickly you’re being, that means he goes to Watford.” It’s a shot in the dark, but I like to throw out wild theories sometimes to see how he reacts.

“This is not even remotely a subject that’s up for discussion,” he responds, putting in his headphones and turning back to his book. I hate when he does that. 

Somehow he managed to bring in an illegal mobile. I was surprised last week when he used it in front of me — normally I would have jumped at the idea of finding something that could get him in trouble. But lately I’ve been focusing a lot less on trying to catch Baz doing something shifty — maybe because he’s now doing the shifty things in front of me — but maybe because I don’t think I care.

And I think… I think I know he’s not a monster. He’s just a boy. A shitty boy, who can be an extreme prick. But still, just a boy, who got outed in front of his classmates. Who listens to Radiohead and eats crisps at night. Who has siblings, and gets bored while doing his homework.

Lately it’s been hard to be in the room with him, because I’m hyper aware of his presence. I always am, always have been. I always have this list in my head about him. Usually it reads something like _1\. What is he plotting? 2. Is he going to hurt someone? 3. Where is he going? 4. Does he know I’m following?_

But right now the list is reading more like  _1\. Does he fancy anyone 2. Has he ever kissed a bloke before? 3. What does kissing a boy taste like? 4. I wonder what colour his eyes are right now._

Staring at the back of his head, as he bobs slightly in time to his music, I wonder what he’s listening to and what his hair feels like.

“My money is on Niall,” I say, even though he can’t hear me. “He’s kind of fit, isn’t he? Or maybe it’s Gareth. I’ve seen the way you stare at his belt buckle.”

“There’s literally no way to not stare at it when he’s shoving it in your face,” Baz snaps. I guess he can hear me. “Now shut up or I’m throwing you out the window.”

“Have you ever kissed a bloke?” I ask. Because I guess this is what I think about now. I don’t know when this started, or why. Part of me wonders if I’m only thinking about Baz like this because we both like blokes, and some part of me is reacting to that. 

But then part of me thinks I’m only thinking about Baz like this because I’m finally getting to know him. He let down some walls — not many, but a few — and now…I guess he doesn’t seem that scary.

“Get up,” he snaps, slamming his book closed and advancing on me. He’s trying to look terrifying, but the edge of his mouth keeps turning up. I think it was always doing that, all the way back to first year, and I just always mistook his smiles for snarls.

“Why?” I ask calmly. I’m still lying on the bed with my head hanging over, and from this angle he’s upside down. 

“Because I’m chucking you out the window.”

Normally I’d growl, and start to get worked up, and we’d end up in a fight on the stairs. But instead I just grin at him, and I see the smallest hint of a smile on his face in return.

And I think I want to kiss him. 

And I think, possibly, he might want to kiss me.

The whole “exceptional” thing aside, there’s small things. Sometimes I catch him looking at me when he doesn’t think I can see him. He’s been a hell of a lot nicer to me since the psych lab, and he even helped me with homework once. 

But the big sign was the time I walked out of the bathroom after my shower, and he had a full metal breakdown. I’d done it on a whim — I didn’t think through it all, just dashed out with my towel around my waist to grab my shirt — and he tensed up so much he broke his pencil in his hand, and then his face went about as red as it can get.

So yeah. I think there’s something there.

Neither of us is going to do anything about it though. He sure as shit isn’t, at least. But I guess I’m the brave one, of the two of us. So if it is going to happen…

I guess I’m going to have to nut up.

Crowely, we’re fucked.

**BAZ**

“We could pretend to be dead,” he says glumly, his feet dragging as we walk across the courtyard. For once, Simon might be on to a good idea. I think I’d rather be dead than go to the next Magickal Psychology lab tomorrow. 

“It’s required. For a grade,” I snap. He looks so dejected that I want to throw my arm around his shoulder and spell him happy.

“I wish the Humdrum would attack,” he mutters. I sigh and hold open the door of Mummers House. 

“It will be fine. We’ll just go in, find out what the control question is, and lie,” I tell him as we trudge up the stairs. He pauses on the middle landing and stares at me. 

“Lie?” 

“Yes, Snow, lie,” I snap when we enter the room. He throws his bag to the ground and collapses onto his bed in a dramatic heap, and a small contented sigh escapes him when he shoves his head into the pillow. “For example, I am neither allergic to cats nor colourblind. And yet I have successfully gotten out of those experiments by lying.”

“You’re not colourblind?” he sputters, turning his head to look at me. The stricken expression on his face makes it seem like I’ve just turned his world upside down. “I thought that’s why you always wear black,” he mutters, then turns his face back into his pillow. 

It’s the makings of a lazy afternoon outside. It’s warm, we’re on the verge of a weekend, and somehow Snow and I have spent the entire day together thus far. We ate breakfast together, talked on the way to class, and actually got scolded by Miss Possibelf for laughing during her lecture. It’s been perfect. 

So I sit on the floor between our beds with my back to the windowsill and tip my head back just a bit so it’s resting against the ledge, and close my eyes. I like this spot because it allows me to feel warm without being in direct sunlight, and it makes me feel like a bit of a sleepy cat. I never would have sat here before Snow and my’s strange gay truce.

“Put on music,” he mumbles sleepily from his bed. 

That’s another thing we do now: we listen to my music. I’ve been using my mobile with him around — I only have to listen to music and text Fiona — and I figured he would just ignore it, consider it a casualty of our strange new tolerance of each other. But then one day I was doing work and he just came over and picked it up. I almost kicked him out of reflex, but he just squinted at the screen, put it down, and shrugged. “I want to see what you were listening to,” he said. He started doing that every time he walked by, picking up my mobile and running his stumpy freckled hands all over it (Crowley, I’d kill to be my mobile) and then one day he goes, “You can play it out loud.”

And now we listen to music.

I barely glance at the screen as I hit play on whatever I had up last, and pull out my wand. “ _ **Come Mr. DJ won’t you turn the music up!**_ ” I cast, and the speaker on my mobile grows louder, unleashing some Radiohead song on our room. I throw the mobile on my bed then close my eyes. Maybe I’ll give in to the cat metaphor and take a nap.

My head’s tipped back and I’m on the verge of truly falling asleep when I feel a small puff of air on my cheek and hear Simon whisper, impossibly close, “ _Baz_.”

My eyes fly open and he’s there, he’s right there, his unexceptional blue eyes staring into mine, and I can’t look away, even though there’s no spell holding me here. Just him. Just Simon. His face is centimetres from mine and there’s no possible explanation for why he’s this close, except for —

“Do you remember that question from the experiment about dying that night and what you would regret not doing or saying?” he asks. I can feel his breath on my lips because he’s that fucking close, and the soft rumble of his voice is reverberating through me. I nod, slowly, because this feels like some kind of hazy spell and I think that quick or sharp movements will dislodge it. 

“I said I’d regret not having killed you,” I whispered. His lips — fuck, his lips — quirk up and he smiles at me. It’s ruinous. 

“I said I don’t really have regrets,” he whispers back. And then he tilts his head. “But that’s not true. I regret that I haven’t done something.”

Aleister fucking Crowley he’s being so cool. When did he get so cool? He’s going to, I know that’s what he’s doing. I know that’s why his head is tilted and he’s leaning even closer. This is going to be it. He’s going to kiss me or kill me, and I’m happy for either. I’ll take whatever he offers, just—

Why isn’t he doing it? His mouth is so close, I can see it, he’s closed his eyes, and he’s just…. Here. Is he waiting? He keeps dipping closer and closer, his mouth ghosting along mine, then he pulls away, and I’m going to explode. I’m going to scream. 

“Simon,” I snarl, because I’m ready to fucking kill him, and his eyes pop open just as I grab the back of his neck and kiss him.

I hear — no, I feel — him hum against my lips, and then he’s doing something with his chin, and he captures my bottom lip in his, and it’s—

It’s sweet. It’s soft. It’s kind and gentle and everything that we aren’t. Everything that I never imagined we could be. He’s kissing me like I’m something precious, like I’m something sacred. No one has ever treated me like this before. 

“Simon—” I start as our lips break away a bit, but he just makes a shushing noise and leans in to kiss me again. He’s on his knees in front of me, his hands planted to the ground on either side of my hip. 

“I know, I’m exceptional,” he whispers, then kisses the corner of my mouth. I laugh — I can’t help it. This is the moment I’ve waited for my entire life, and I feel drunk off of him. 

I want more.

“Let’s just—not overtalk this. Let’s just do this, yeah? I want to do this, all of this, the whole thing, us, let’s just do it,” he says, then flicks his tongue over my bottom lip. He could probably have asked me to set myself on fire after that and I would say yes. I have no idea what he’s talking about — snogging? Sex? Dating? I don’t know. I don’t care. I’ll do anything if he’s involved. I try not to think about what he’s suggesting, and instead I just turn off my mind, like he would. He’s gotten pretty far in life so far, there’s got to be a benefit to it, right?

“Absolutely,” I mutter, bringing my hands up to grasp his hips, and it’s like some kind of sign or permission to him, because suddenly his hands are in my hair and he’s gathering it up in chunks and pulling on it slightly, wrapping it around his fingers as his nails lightly scratch my scalp and it’s a sensory overload. I push him away, but his hands are still in my hair, he’s really got a strong fucking hold on it, and so we both go kareening backwards and he lands on his back and smiles up at me as he laughs breathlessly.

I go for the mole on his neck like a target.

“You’re exceptional too,” he whispers. He’s wriggling beneath me, his whole body tensing and relaxing as I kiss every mole and freckle I can find. There’s two hiding under his collar, I know, and so I’m focused on pulling his knotted tie off so I can get to them. 

“Of course I am,” I snap back. His tie is really, truly, astonishing tangled. Does he just hang himself every morning in the process of getting dressed? I should just set it on fire. It would serve him right. 

“I think that that stupid spell must have known that I—” he’s saying, breathless, as I work at the knot. This useless piece of clothing is keeping me from his Adam’s Apple and there is absolutely no bigger injustice in this world right now. 

“Simon,” I snarl. I’m angry at his tie, and I’m taking it out on him, but I don’t care. Nothing matters. “Shut the fuck up. It paired us together because I’m obsessed with you, and I’m going to set you on fire if you don’t learn how to tie your tie like an adult.”

His smile blinds me. His eyes scrunch at the corners and he reveals all his teeth — not perfect and uniform, utterly unexceptional, just like his eyes, yet endlessly adorable — and it’s a smile full of joy and surprise and more than a little mischievousness. 

“ ** _Just get my clothes off,_** ” he says, and it comes out with magic even though it’s absolutely not a spell. It’s some kind of fucked up horny compulsion, and I feel myself pulled back to the tie, ripping it from his neck, my fingers running under the buttons of his collar and popping them. I feel out of control, ruled by a force that’s not me, and it’s terrifying. 

But it’s giving me the courage to do what I’ve wanted to do for years. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he gasps. He’s seen the panic in my eyes. “It does that sometimes, my magic. When I feel… a lot.  ** _Do what you want! You don’t have to!_** ” he gasps out, and I feel the compulsion lift.

My fingers keep working at his shirt though, and I can’t stop myself from giggling. It’s not funny — he just forced me to do something with magic, I should be horrified — but this is surreal and I feel like I’m drinking in the galaxy everytime my lips meet his skin. 

“I guess Greg’s fucked up experiment worked,” I say between laughs. His breath gets faster as I kiss at his collarbone, and he frowns at me. 

“Don’t,” he stutters, then shakes his head. “What the fuck Baz? Don’t talk about Greg,” he pouts. “Greg can get stuffed for all I care.”

“But it worked, didn’t it?” I say, nuzzling at his neck. He growls, grabs my shoulders, and turns me forcefully, so that I’m on the ground he’s above me. This is a first — I’m always above him. By at least three inches.

But then he grins. 

“He can never know,” Simon says, and I nod. 

“Absolutely fucking not,” I agree, and lean up to meet his mouth again. He laughs against my lips and pushes back at the kiss. I can taste the smoke of his magic in my mouth. It’s going to be there for the rest of the day, I know. Not even brushing my teeth is going to get the taste of Simon out.

Maybe psychology isn’t the worst.

 

 


End file.
